The Visitor
by Brown hair and eyes
Summary: Someone visits the hub at dead of night. And when Timelords have identity crisis's they are always serious.


The Visitor  
AN: Hope you enjoy, the idea has being hanging around my brain for a while so I decieded to share it. Please please review and help me to improve! Thanks.

By some unspoken pact, they never mention the visitor.  
Not between themselves and certainly not to anyone else.  
They try to forget (and mostly succeeded) but when a member of the team has blood shot eyes in the morning everyone knows why.  
They will not share this secret because they have realised how important it is, that it is a duty that should not be shirked because however bad they are feeling, however much loss they are experiencing, however much pain they are in, they know that someone is worse off.

And that someone visits the hub at night.  
Not every night.  
Not at regular intervals.  
But always at night-time, as if the daylight would be enough to shatter him completely, to expose the ugly truth.

Sometimes its just enough for him to stand there while somebody gets on with their paperwork or does their overtime (because even at Torchwood with its very flexible work times – almost as flexible as the good Captain himself – overtime when everyone else has gone home is sometimes unavoidable), sometimes they will look up from their task and see him just sipping tea and drinking in an unthreatening presence.  
But sometimes it isn't (and they all secretly dread those times).

Sometimes he's covered in blood and mud and has to be treated.  
Sometimes he's weeping, sobbing so hard he can barely stand.  
Sometimes he walks in looking perfectly fine and only falls to pieces when someone touches him or repeats something or moves aggressively.  
Sometimes his wan smile and his suit are the only things holding him together (and when that happens, even the members who have an axe to grind with the visitor but their objections aside because this is _important_.)  
And once in a blue moon 1. it will go horribly wrong.

He hardly ever shows his discomfort at Jack's presence so if he starts wincing when Jack approaches, the team can tell that his shields have taken a battering.  
But this time it was different, horribly different.

This time the Visitor crash-landed and started screaming as soon as he left the Tardis doors but instead of turning back he staggered forward towards them.  
"Quick get the kit! What's wrong? Tell me?" Jack's voice was a strange mixture of angry and worried that mirrored perfectly his confusion. Usually after some incident had weakened the Visitor's mental shields the Tardis had the good sense not to land when Jack was about and on the rare occasion when it did the Doctor usually beat a rapid retreat.

They all started to recall what little they know about the visitor.  
He has some telepathic abilities, mainly "touch telepathic" according to one of his rambles.  
His home world was destroyed in the Time war that he took some major part in.  
The Visitor, despite what the Torchwood charter says 2. – is not _likely_ to try and harm the earth, not that most of the times he visits he is in any state to be able to do so.  
The Visitor occasionally, when under great distress, or alien drugs, or trying to get them to leave him alone so he can grieve or rage in piece, will call Jack "_wrong"_, a fixed point in time that _should never ever have been_. (He doesn't however, Jack noticed, ever call him a _freak_ like the Master did. And he's so grateful for that.)

But they haven't actually sat down and _thought_ about what they know and what they have learnt about their visitor. They have all the facts but the _stupid apes_ don't quite realise what it actually means.

1. The Timelords are time sensitive. (Jack's presence on some level of their visitors senses is actually painful due to this awareness of the pattens and eddies of time.)

2. It is the his shields that minimise this pain, he still recognises the _abnormality_ of Jack's presence but the shields allow him to repress the distress this survival instinct causes him (For Timelords are time sensitive and because of this their very genetic background is designed to avoid the hazards with it by encourage them to move away and avoid the physical and mental damage broken time can to bring to them. Humans can live by anomalies without negative effects. Timelords can't. Which is partially why they were driven into time technology to give them the ability to _fix_ them...)

3. Gallifrey, the Doctor's home world was destroyed but in the past as well as the future and the present _and_ the whole section was time locked.

4. The Doctor could _sense_ other Timelords and the lack of them. Even among mild-telepaths that would have been a major blow (like loss the ability to see colours, or hear music or feel warmth would be a blow.)

Doctor could therefore sense not only the _lack_ of other Timelords but could sense that in all rules of the universe he and the Tardis should _ not even exist_.

6. Usually his Shields kept this realisation only on an intellectual level were it was manageable.

7. His Shields were down.

8. Not just down, burnt and shattered and crushed until there was nothing left. And all of the horrors of the Time War (t_he Skaro Degradations, the Horde of Travesties, the Nightmare Child, the Could-Have-Been King with his army of Meanwhiles and Never-Weres and what he did, oh what he did_) and his own ultimate, undeniable _non-existence_ were pouring through his brain, consuming his every thought.

9. So he was clinging to Jack (the anomaly, the fixed broken point) and begging him to tell him about his deaths because it drew his attention away from his non-existence that hurt so much, because although Jack hurt, it was nothing to what happened if he stopped being distracted).

When Timelords have identity crisis's they are _always_ serious and unfortunately all the truly capable psychiatrists and mind-healers were trapped in the hell they called the time war, which was happening inside his head and _how it hurts_!

Jack holds him and whispers nonsense (desperately wishing his training from the agency had more about mind shields and Timelord abilities than seduction techniques, though a small part of Jack's brain mused they do come in handy) and the team stand and stare not understanding and the Tardis sings so loud to try to distract him and even his sense of time itself fails him.

Time passed.  
Eventually the sobbing stopped.  
The Visitor gained enough shields to remember his name and how to block out the war.  
And then the visitor left.

They didn't do anything to help (but they were non-hostile, they were close, they had a time lock that stopped some of the worst effects and more importantly they were for some reason _safe_) but they did everything.  
The visitor was not the the Doctor, saver of the universe, protector of Earth, Jack's... well Jack's non-brother because the Visitor was vulnerable when the Doctor can't let himself be. And that made all the difference in the world.

(Because deep in the Torchwood charter Queen Victoria had instructed them to _safeguard_ the Earth against the Doctor. And they did their duty.)

1. And he in in his better days when he's only coming for company rambles on about how that phrase was stolen – not borrowed – from some peaceful, well I say _peaceful_, Ralitions who came to visit Earth after there system which contains a blue moon, well more like turquoisey-purple, which only visits once a lifetime was destroyed by some humanoids who weren't looking where they were testing their Trace Heat Propulsion System...after a while you tune it out only to find that your requisition/medical report/technical annotations/blackmail material has gained interesting anecdotes about how to describe a new emotion to a repressed telepathic dog or some otherworldly and useless trivia.

2. Not that any of them, except Jack, have ever been bored or desperate enough to read all of it, as it masses over 20,000 pages due to some former members started treating it as some kind of grimoire instead of the rulebook it was designed to be!


End file.
